Building Evidence for a Prevention-Focused Education Program Targeting Parents of Infants and Toddlers

A lack of parenting skills puts young children at greater risk of maltreatment, and impedes healthy child development. Using a combination of a pre-post and post-only design, a prevention-focused parenting education workshop series was assessed to determine its influence on parenting knowledge and self-efficacy. Outcome measures indicated that parents who attended the workshop series showed significant improvement despite having limited resources and a greater number of risk factors. Results suggest that arming parents with knowledge and skills around parenting may lead to increased parenting self-efficacy, potentially reducing risk of child maltreatment and fostering more supportive and responsive parenting.